


do you believe in magic?

by runnyc33, virtueoso



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 16:16:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14793794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runnyc33/pseuds/runnyc33, https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtueoso/pseuds/virtueoso
Summary: In which Scott discovers that the most momentous occasion of his life is not the day his Hogwarts letter arrives, and Tessa learns that magic comes in many forms.





	do you believe in magic?

There is a single book in Scott Moir’s house that is quite unlike the rest.

From the exterior, the book is unremarkable. Faded leather covers, as battered as the other tomes that crowd the shelf of his parents’ bedroom. Gold lettering, flaked with age, details the title: _‘Family Scrapbook’._ The pages are uneven and yellowing, some almost tearing free of the binding.

A curious visitor might notice that the thin layer of dust coating the shelf stops neatly at the book’s edges.

If one were to look inside, they would find a catalogue of family portraits depicting Moirs through the ages. The photos are lovingly pasted, some in black and white, crinkled with age but strangely unfaded, some in the dull sandy wash of sepia, others in a technicolour burst of life. All are variations on the same theme: a Moir child, around eleven years old and dressed in a pristine school uniform, with their name and school printed neatly below. Scowls and gap-toothed smiles feature in equal measure, but linger long enough and you would notice the most important thing about this book - all of the photos move.

The Moir lineage has been rich with magic for as long as anyone can remember.

Scott’s mother has no magic of her own - she married into the madness, bless her soul - but Scott’s father, and his grandparents, and his great-grandparents all have their page. Scott’s two older brothers, Danny and Charlie, they both have pages too.

Scott has spent all nine years of his life poring over that book. He’s picked out the page where his picture will go - the one with the bent corner and the faint red stain from the time he gave himself a papercut flicking through the pages too fast (he wouldn’t let his father charm away the smear of blood; told him that it meant the page belonged to him, and only him). He knows the six words that will underscore his name: _Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

It comes as quite a surprise, then, that the most momentous occasion of Scott’s life is _not_ the day his Hogwarts acceptance letter arrives.

No, the moment that his parents retell over and over again, to family friends who have heard the tale a hundred times before, to newspapers looking for the inside story, to Scott himself, rolling his eyes over the kitchen table - that moment occurs years before.

\-----

Scott arrives at the rink early for once, but only because the schedule his mother thrust into his hands states that there’s supposed to be a hockey practice. Evidently the schedule was wrong, because when he reaches the boards, the rink is empty save for one person.

A girl, younger than him, stands at centre ice.

She’s small and slight - the clean white boots on her feet look impossibly big, like clown shoes. Her hair, chestnut-coloured and wispy, is pulled back into a bun, though stray tendrils curl past her chin. Her dress reminds Scott of the colour of the sky on a cloudless summer’s day, the satin fabric pulled up to her neck and down to her knees; it looks as though she might disappear into it at any moment. For a minute, Scott wonders what she’s doing there, alone on the ice.

Then she starts to skate.

She’s freestyling to some music in her head; in the silence Scott can hear her skates rasp across the ice. He’s mesmerised. His aunt keeps trying to convince him to skate with a partner, but the girls his age…they bore him. They move stiffly, looking at their feet, concerned only about falling down. This girl - she moves with grace, never once looking down, even as she enters a spin.

He watches her as she gracefully exits the spin into a slow arc on the ice.

He watches as she twists to skate backwards deftly, quickly.

He watches until he hears her say, “You know, it’s not polite to stare.”

Scott blinks at her, owlishly. He’s not used to this - his brothers order him around, but they’re older and he ignores them half the time anyway. This girl is as tiny as he is, yet she commands his attention, with her arms folded across her chest and her chin jutted out defiantly.

Has he seen her before? Scott’s sure he would remember. His mother and aunt coach at the rink - practically own it, in fact, so this little patch of ice has been his kingdom ever since he was old enough to stand. He’s watched an assortment of people come and go: the gangly skaters twice his age tripping over their toe picks, his hockey teammates body-checking their way across the ice. He’s never, _ever_ seen anyone like her.

But she’s beginning to stare at him like she’s concerned for his well-being, as he stands there with his mouth agape, so he starts simply.

“Hi. I’m Scott,” he says.

“Tessa,” she replies, and sticks out a hand. Her voice is higher than he expected. “Ready to skate?”

He doesn’t know why he nods. He’s here for a hockey practice, not to trail around the rink after a partner, but this girl is so forthright that it’s difficult to say no. And anyway - as he clocks the empty stands and the silence from the changing room - he’s beginning to think that the flyer his mother shoved into his hands was not entirely truthful.

Tessa raises her eyebrows, waves her outstretched hand. “Come on, then.”

Scott’s palms are clammy and cold as he joins hands with Tessa and leads her around the ice - but it’s okay, because hers are too. It’s not at all what he thought holding a girl’s hand would be like; sweaty and embarrassing and tugging one another in different directions. Her small fingers grip his with confidence, and she matches him stroke-for-stroke across the ice. Holding Tessa’s hand feels _right_.

“Do you - uh, do you know the tango yet?” he asks, after a moment.

There’s a hint of surprise in Tessa’s eyes as she swiftly maneuvers them into a dance hold. “Of course.”

At first, as they begin the pattern, he thinks of his edges, his posture. His aunt’s words echo in his ears: back straight, bend from the knees, breathe - definitely breathe, even though she’s skating so close to him that he’s sure he’s going to trip over her feet. He wants to look down to check, but Tessa holds his gaze. Her eyes are so green - greener than anything Scott has seen in his entire life - and unwavering from his. He couldn’t possibly look away.

They don’t miss a step, don’t falter, and the pattern holds. Scott likes to think of himself as a natural-born skater. He makes light work of turns that take older children months to master, flies into spins and jumps at a fearless pace, always pushing to be the fastest and the strongest and the best. His aunt insists that he can’t possibly waste all his talent in hockey, but he’s never liked the feeling of being the only person out there at centre ice. He needs teammates - he needs a partner. He needs Tessa.

At the very back of the stands, Scott’s mother turns away with a watery-eyed smile on her face. “Well, I think we may have ourselves a partnership.”

Tessa’s mother nods. It’s been clear from the moment their children took each other’s hands.

\-----

Tessa’s first brush with skating comes at the age of five, during a birthday party for one of her Muggle neighbors. Nobody expects it to be the start of a lifelong love, and yet - from lacing her skates to her first, tentative steps, to the confident glide she builds up by the end of the session - she is captivated.

Filtering off the ice at the end of the party, Tessa spots two teenagers, a boy and a girl, removing their skate guards at the side of the rink. While the other kids rush to the cake, she stands by the boards and watches the pair with rapturous attention.   

She can barely see over the top of the dividing wall, has to teeter on her tiptoes to get a proper look, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to memorise every single detail. The way the girl and her partner take the ice, chattering to one another, hand-in-hand. The swift sureness of their steps as they warm up, skating laps of the rink’s perimeter. The power, and the grace, and the softness of their movements, the way the sequins on the girl’s dress glitter under the fluorescent lights like a second skin as her partner dips and turns her.

Tessa is transfixed.

“They’re a promising pair, I think,” comes a rich, deep voice. “A little sloppy, here and there, but nothing we can’t fix in time.”

When she turns, there’s a man standing beside her. His dark hair is tinted with grey, the lines on his face creasing like the pages of a well-worn book as he smiles. Tessa eyes him warily until she sees the skaters on the ice wave at him.

For a while, he stands silently next to her, watching the skaters - and watching her, out of the corner of his eye. Tessa doesn’t mind; her attention is focused entirely on the pair flowing across the ice. As the boy lifts the girl, and the girl twirls her body around his shoulders, Tessa gasps. Both skaters’ muscles tense and ripple, but the expressions on their faces remain serene - it’s magic. Each movement tells a story and she’d be quite happy to stay there for hours watching the narrative unfold, if it weren’t for the noise of the party in the background. Perhaps the man clocks her guilty look towards the children clustered into a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ in the hallway, because he gives a short laugh.

“I teach a beginners’ class on Monday afternoons, if you’d like to learn,” he says, producing a crumpled flyer from his back pocket. “Just a hunch, but you look like you might be interested.”

Tessa nods, quickly, grabs the flyer with both hands - “Yes, sir, I’d like that.”

While everyone else is busy fighting for the last slices of cake, Tessa reads and re-reads her small piece of paper, so many times that the words become ingrained in her memory. Her thoughts whirl with visions of the wind rushing through her hair as she skates, of a shadowed partner mirroring her every move.

Upon arriving home, her bemused parents are faced with a small child resolutely set on becoming an ice dancer.  For most pure-bloods, the idea of taking up such an obscure Muggle sport would be downright bizarre, but her parents have never been able to resist Tessa’s wishes - when she stubbornly decides this is her calling, they relent, and sign her up for the beginners’ class.

Tessa quickly discovers that she is not a natural skater. She loves to move to the music, and she loves the exhilaration of eventual success, but she does not glide across the ice like she belongs there. When the edges of her blades hit divots left by skaters before her, she does not cut through them, but catches her blade and falls. When she first attempts a spin, she immediately topples over - and again the second time, and the third, until her knees are black and blue with trying.

In no time at all, Tessa has amassed a proud collection of battle wounds. Her mother could heal them all with nothing but a wave of her wand, but Tessa refuses to let her. She likes her little ritual - peeling off her skating gear, layer by layer, prodding each freshly-blooming bruise with a grin. Each one tells a story: the first time she tried an axel jump and nearly threw herself into the boards, the layback spin that was going so beautifully until she tried to change edge and tumbled over sideways, the time she got over-eager demonstrating a three-turn and her feet slipped out from underneath her. Collectively, Tessa’s bruises chronicle her pursuit of excellence - completing the beginner’s class, taking the intermediate, hiring a private coach, until she’s only seven years old and still considered the most promising child at her rink.

The natural next step is to find a partner. Her coach has heard that there’s a boy at one of the local rinks, old to not yet have a permanent partner, but skilled, well matched to Tessa’s size and ability. What’s more, he’s a _Moir_. Tessa doesn’t really know what this means, but she figures it must be important because people react strangely when she tells them. When the girls who skate during her session at the rink hear, they immediately break into gossip.

“You have an audition with Scott Moir?! He’s the most talented skater of his generation!”

“I hear strange stuff happens around that family though.”

“Who cares? You skate like that, I’ll put up with a haunted rink!”

“God, it’s a shame those older Moir boys went off to boarding school - they were fine!”

By the time the day of her try-out with Scott arrives, she half-expects to find that her prospective partner sprouts angel wings as soon as he steps onto the ice. She pulls on her best blue dress, forgoes the usual plaits and instead allows her mother to tie her hair back into a bun. There’s a knot of anxiety in her stomach that grows bigger and bigger they closer they get to four o’ clock.

“What if he doesn’t like me?” she asks, sitting cross-legged in the backseat of the taxi to the rink.

“Of course he will,” comes the reply from her mother, forthright as ever. “And if he doesn’t, then he’s not right to be your partner anyway.”

“What if he’s better than me?”

“You’re very well matched, your coach said,” her mother reminds her. “Now come here, let me fix your hair.”

“What if-”

She gets a _look_ \- the one that says question time is over, and abruptly shuts up. As she turns to let her mother fix her bun, Tessa’s hands flutter briefly in her lap before stilling. Her mother can’t help but smile - it’s an inherited tic. She knows how much Tessa wants this to work out; she’s been rambling about getting a partner for months.

“All you have to do is go out there and dance. He’ll love you, sweetheart. Everyone will.”

Tessa nods and looks out the window as they pass rows of houses interspersed with wide, open stretches of farmland. The shadowed partner in her imagination has never had a face; not until she started considering what it would be like to skate with Scott Moir. Now the boy in her imagination has brown eyes and brown hair, and, well - that’s all she’s been able to gather from her extensive network of intelligence.

They arrive at the rink a little before half past three, so she has some time to warm up by herself before Scott is scheduled to be here. Her mother leaves her by the boards to lace up her skates and Tessa tries to ignore the nervousness in the pit of her stomach as she takes in her surroundings.

Scott’s rink has a small-town feel, the lights a little dimmer, a little less glaring than the ones at her home rink in London. She likes it, she decides - it feels warm and welcoming, and not at all like the kind of place that houses Scott Moir, a once-in-a-generation talent. It helps that the rink is almost entirely empty as she takes the ice; in the shadows of the stands she can just about see the blonde head of her mother, next to a woman she doesn’t recognise.

Just skate like it’s a normal practice, Tessa tells herself, as she double-checks to make sure her laces are firmly taped to her boots, nods towards her mother. Just like it’s any other session, and not the moment she’s been eagerly anticipating for the past two months. No problem.

There’s no music - she doesn’t need it. Ever since she started dancing, she’s been able to conjure up symphonies in her head. She likes to interpret music by instinct, not by memorising choreography; a continual point of contention in her club’s end-of-season skating show.

But she pushes off across the ice, starts to stroke around the rink, and sure enough, the music comes to her. It begins simple and sweet, a high piano melody against a rhythmic harmony. She imagines the pianist at the keyboard, fingers moving gently over the keys, and she tries to infuse her skating with the same energy. Her movements flow and change as the music does; the line of her arms rises and falls, and she leans into the ice, pushes from her knees.

She’s weaving music from thin air as she skates, pulling instruments to her like gossamer thread in an tapestry. Now a cello joins the piano, low and melancholy, and she bends backwards into a layback spin. The gentle rasp of her blade as she spins is an instrument all by itself; a constant underpinning, the link between her music and her movements.

A final instrument completes the piece - chimes, barely audible, but Tessa picks them out of the interweaving melodies. She twists her hand above her head, reaches as high as she can, and the sound rings out, clear and pure. She’s smiling, she realises, as the music draws to a close and all the instruments drop away. Only the piano remains, a few final notes for her finishing pose - one arm drawn into her chest, the other outstretched, fingers spread as if grasping for something unseen.

When Tessa looks to the boards, she sees him.

The very first thing that strikes her is how _small_ he is. The way people were talking about him, she thought he’d be at least six feet tall - but Scott Moir is barely taller than she is. He has a short crop of brown hair, and dark brown eyes that peer out at her - and everything else about him may be small, but his nose certainly isn’t. His clothes are smart, a black shirt tucked into black trousers. He keeps tugging at the collar in a way that makes her think perhaps his mum shoved him into the nicest clothes in his wardrobe. Tessa is sympathetic; her pretty blue dress itches terribly too.

It takes her calling out for him to take the ice, and longer still for him to start talking - honestly, he might be a beautiful skater, but what’s up with the staring? He takes her outstretched hand, though, and they begin to skate.

Suddenly, her coach’s words make sense. She can _feel_ as he leans - his edges must be so deep, and she wonders how he’s doing it, but she won’t look down because she knows that’s the mark of an amateur, and this boy is decidedly _not_ an amateur. Instead, she tries to match him; his movements, the tiny adjustments he’s making to skate next to her.

After a few laps, they move into a dance hold to begin the tango. Here, at least, she knows what she has to do: places a hand firmly on the back of his shoulder and locks her eyes onto his. She was wrong, she realises. His eyes aren’t plain brown - they’re full of tiny flecks of orange and green and amber and yellow, so many colours that it makes Tessa dizzy to try and count them all. It’s very distracting, especially when she’s concentrating so hard on not tripping over her own feet.

Skating with Scott is far from easy. She has to push herself harder than she thought possible to keep up with him, his speed and ease across the ice, the smoothness of his edges, the intensity of his gaze.

Her fingers tighten around his, and the thought passes through her mind: skating with Scott means she’ll no longer be the best. As they skate, she brings that thought forward, turns it over in her head - it’s not false, or born from doubt or insecurity.  Maybe she'll never be as good a skater as he is.

But skating with Scott will make her better. The decision is simple.

\-----

They don’t talk.

It’s not that they don’t _want_ to. Both keep up endless conversations with their partner in their head - Scott, I learned the multiplication tables in school; Tessa, I scored a goal against Danny today, can you believe it? But when they’re sat next to each other at the boards, lacing up their skates, nothing comes out.

Day after day, they take the ice in silence, until one day in practice Scott catches an edge in a twizzle. He staggers, his arms windmilling above his head as he tries to maintain balance - teeters on the brink for what seems like an eternity, before leaping onto the other foot. Tessa bursts into a splutter of laughter. Then, immediately, she claps both hands over her mouth with a horrified look on her face.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Scott hears, muffled through her fingers. “I’m sorry.”

He simply stares at her, wide-eyed, sure that a sound so loud could never have come from the same girl who gives him a one-word, halting greeting every session at the rink. But it happens again, and again; when he tells her stories from hockey practice, repeats corny jokes gathered from his friends that he thought no one in their right mind would ever find funny. It even happens during his aunt’s droning lectures, pulling half-hearted faces behind her back and daring Tessa to laugh.

She holds out valiantly, but sooner or later the edges of her lips will begin to twitch, and her shoulders will start to shake, and Scott knows he’s got her. Making Tessa laugh is not his _only_ goal during practice, but Scott keeps a count of the sessions that end without her fits of helpless giggles, and he’s on single digits.

For her part, Tessa is enamoured. It’s so easy to like Scott; even when she’s frustrated by her inability to get the edges that she needs, the edges that he seems to find with ease. He taps the side of her hand - _are you okay?_ \- and she’ll tap back - _fine_ \- and sooner or later, he’ll find some way to make her laugh. She skates better when she’s not thinking too hard, when it’s just them, having fun on the ice.

Sometimes she misses the music that she used to make by herself, but more and more, she finds that she doesn’t need it - not when she’s improving faster than she ever has before. The thrill of victory as she hits an edge _just_ right in her turns is addictive, especially when she can turn to Scott and see a toothy grin reflected back at her. She shares her triumph with a partner now, and success is all the sweeter.

\-----

They’ve been skating together for a month when Scott’s father comes to the rink.

Tessa can tell how much this means by how poorly Scott skates for their entire session beforehand. He’s easily distracted in general, but Tessa’s never had to tug him backwards by the edge of his shirt to stop him twizzling into the boards before. He keeps craning his head to peer into the stands, like the harder he stares, the quicker his father will show up; it’s a relief on the part of everyone involved when Scott finally spots his father approaching.

“Dad!” Scott exclaims, waving wildly as he drags Tessa over to the boards. “Over here! This is Tessa!”

Behind thick rimmed glasses, his father’s eyes crinkle into a smile. The two children make quite a pair; Scott in his gym uniform with a baggy sweatshirt pulled over the top, Tessa with a perfectly plaited braid wound into a bun and an immaculately clean leotard. The latter pulls her head down with a nervous smile.

“Tessa Virtue,” Scott continues, by way of explanation.  “We’re Virtue and Moir!”

His father sucks in a quiet breath, but recovers before either of the children notice.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tessa,” he says, with a kindly smile. “Scott’s been talking my ear off about you for weeks. I don’t suppose your parents are Jim and Kate?”

Tessa’s eyes widen in surprise. Her head bobs up and down as she nods, quickly.

“Well, please tell them that Joe says hello.”

Later that night, just as Scott’s making his way upstairs to bed, he catches whispers from the kitchen.

“Scott is skating with Tessa Virtue? As in _the_ Virtues?”

“Really, I’m sure I told you this before,” comes his mother’s reply, more short-tempered than he’s accustomed to hearing. “Yes, _the_ Virtues. Tessa’s a lovely little girl, she does her parents proud.”

“I’m surprised she can even stand with the weight of that bloodline on her shoulders.”

Sitting in the dark on the top step of the stairs as his parents continue their hushed conversation, Scott learns that the Virtues are pure-bloods - from England, no less. He’s not really sure what a lot of the words his parents are using mean - words like ‘ambassadors’ and ‘emigrate’ and ‘socialite’ - but he knows that it means Tessa’s family is much more important than he thought. He thinks his mother mentions something about the Minister of Magic _himself_ asking Tessa’s parents to work for the Canadian Magical Ministry? Scott’s not clear - he gets very distracted by the mention of a party.

Every year, at Christmas, the Virtues throw an elaborate party - an event his parents have attended more than once - complete with a host of extraordinary sights, both magical and mundane. Scott hears about swans carved from ice that come alive and dip their heads as guests pass by, an elaborate marquee constructed in the grounds of the house with room for more than a hundred people, strings of lanterns that hang in the air on invisible thread, containing not flame, but tiny motes of light that dance in the night air like dust. He listens to it all with bated breath - will Tessa invite him next year?

“Do you think it’s wise to have that type of family around Scott?” his father asks.

“Tessa’s only seven,” his mother says firmly. “And the Virtues have no problem with her being coached by my sister - who, may I remind you, is a Muggle. They dance so wonderfully together, don’t you dare take that away.”

Scott tries to process everything he’s heard. Tessa’s rich? Tessa’s parents are magic? More importantly - Tessa’s magic?! _Tessa is magic too._

That night, like most nights, he dreams of Hogwarts. Except this time he’s not there alone - he’s with Tessa, holding hands as they run through the massive castle, getting stuck on moving staircases, transfiguring cups into birds, throwing charms at each other in a mock duel. He dreams of playing Quidditch together, and sneaking away from school to continue to train.

When he wakes, he ignores the little voice of doubt in his mind. His brothers, and their friends, and his cousins, they all showed signs of magic by seven. He is nine and still waiting for the faintest hint of his own magic. But it doesn’t matter - if Tessa’s going to Hogwarts, he will too.

At the next practice, he pulls Tessa aside before they reach the boards.

“I heard my parents talking about your parents last night,” he whispers, hopping from foot to foot in excitement. “You’re magic?! I am too.”

Tessa gasps, her green eyes as round as saucers. “You are?!”

Scott nods so emphatically his entire body seems to shake.

“My dad, he went to Hogwarts! My brothers are all there now,” he says, and then, like a balloon suddenly deflating, he gets quiet. “I want to go too.”

His aunt calls them over to begin running through their pattern before Tessa can ask why he sounded so sad. But in whispered conversations during their skate, she learns that he’s still waiting for his magic.

“Maybe you need someone to surprise you,” she says, as they’re catching their breath against the boards. “I heard that sometimes people have to be really scared or upset or happy for their magic to show up. One of my friends didn’t even know she had magic until her brother fell out of a tree right on top of her and she made him float away so high that the Ministry had to send out a special search party to get him back.”

“I, uh-” Scott says, in a hesitant tone of voice. “I don’t think I want that to happen.”

“What if I try and frighten you? Jump out from a cupboard with a scary mask on, or something. Charlie would help, you know he would!”

“I dunno, Tess, it sounds kind of dangerous.”

Tessa gives him a curious look. “What’s there to be afraid of? I’m magic too, it’ll be fine.”

“Look, can we not talk about this anymore?” he says, and grabs her hand. “My aunt wants us back now.”

Over the weeks, the tension surrounding Scott’s magic only grows the more he tries to avoid talking about it. Tessa knows he’s late. She’s been waiting for her own to show up - she’s seven, and her parents tell her it’ll be this year. She can feel him sometimes, pushing and pulling for it, worries that perhaps he’s trying too hard - but whenever she brings it up, he shrugs her off.

“My dream is winning the Stanley Cup,” he says. “I don’t need to be magic to do that.”

In the back of his mind, though, it lurks. For a while, when he thought Tessa was a Muggle, he imagined it wouldn’t be so bad if he ended up being a Squib, but now that she’s magic…the Stanley Cup won’t be enough for him, not if he’s stuck here while she goes off to Hogwarts and gets to play Quidditch and learn all the spells his brothers tease him about.

Skating, at least, gives him something else to focus on - and it certainly helps that he and Tessa seem to excel. They quickly outgrow the tutelage of Scott’s aunt, and move to a proper coaching team at a bigger rink in Kitchener-Waterloo. Their new coaches, Paul and Suzanne, are very different.  Paul likes to stand at the boards in his dark leather jacket and make them practice their twizzles until they can barely walk in a straight line. Suzanne likes to sit them down at the end of every week and make them talk about their feelings. Scott’s not sure which is worse.

Their training regime takes some getting used to. For the entirety of Scott’s life, he’s had the rink within touching distance of his backyard. Now he and Tessa wake at four in the morning, staying conscious only long enough to drag themselves from the beds to the car before collapsing on each other. At six-thirty they’re on the ice, training for two hours, before the long ride back to school and a ten o’clock start.

It’s exhausting, but it’s rewarding, and Scott kind of enjoys the hours he spends crushed in the backseat between Tessa’s sleeping form and their skate bags. He likes it best when Tessa’s parents drive them to the rink; then he gets to go in the fancy car with cup holders for his water bottle, and arm rests that he can pull down when he and Tessa get bored of sleeping and decide to play games. He’s been teaching her how to play checkers on a little magnetic board. She’s not very good - she learns quickly but they don’t play enough, mostly because Scott finds that Tessa really, _really_ doesn’t like losing, and it’s difficult to skate with a partner who refuses to talk to him for the entire session.

All the while, Scott wills his magic to arrive. When it does come, finally:

It’s not his mother, warm and patient and smiling - “It’ll happen when it happens, Scotty.  _I_ _f_ it happens, remember.”

It’s not his brothers, goading as they skate laps around him at the rink - “Hey Scott, catch us if you dare. Try using that magic, huh? Oh, wait…”

It’s Tessa, her small face scrunched and pale as they hit the one-hour mark on their early morning practice session.

Paul claps his hands.

“Again,” he barks.

Dutifully, Scott and Tessa round the corner, gather speed and enter the twizzle sequence. And again - they know it’s not right when they hear the other’s blade hit the ice out of sync with their own.

Paul shakes his head, looks down at the ice with a heavy sigh. “Wrong.”

Tessa squares her jaw, tension filling the muscles. She doesn’t understand how to make it right, but she knows it must be her fault - couldn’t possibly be the skating protege next to her.

“This must be the twelfth time,” Scott says, his voice low and hushed.

“Fifteen,” Tessa corrects.

They round the corner again, into the twizzle sequence, into yet another sigh and a head-shake, and Tessa mutters, “Sixteen”.

Scott balls his hands into fists. He knows Tessa blames herself, and honestly, if Paul’s not going to explain how they can improve, he should just get out of their way and let them try to work this out themselves.

He can hear their coach grumbling to himself across the ice, so as he takes Tessa’s hand, gathering speed to make the approach into the sequence, he smirks at her.

“Watch this, I’m going to make him shut up.”

He waves his free hand widely, wildly, imitating the wand movement he’s seen his brothers make, and authoritatively declares, “Silence”. And incredibly - Paul is silenced. They can see him behind the boards, turning red faced as he tries to speak, but not a word escapes.

Scott stares down at his hands in amazement.

“Was that you?” Tessa says, wide-eyed and awestruck.

Breathlessly, Scott nods, laughing. Tessa laughs too, squeezes her fingers around his hand, and then they’re pulling each other into a hug, all wide smiles and trembling excitement.

“Magic, Scott!” she whispers into his ear as they spin, around and around until all the world is a blur of colour and it’s just him and Tessa, and her words echoing about them.

“You’re _magic_!”

\-----

Once Scott’s magic shows itself, it doesn’t take long for Tessa’s to follow behind. She’s been awaiting her own display, impatiently, iron-willed in her belief: she is going to Hogwarts with Scott. If magic doesn’t come to her, she’ll make it come.

They’re practicing under Suzanne’s supervision when it happens, working through some choreography for their very first free dance. The upcoming season will be their competitive debut, and Suzanne has put together a balletic waltz that shows off their strengths; Tessa’s innate elegance and musicality, and Scott’s purity of edge.

“So, Tessa, for this next bit I want you to really extend your arm. Point those fingers as straight as you can,” Suzanne says, demonstrating the movement as she speaks.

Tessa nods emphatically, her eyes alight with excitement. Suzanne is so different to any coach Tessa has ever had before - for starters, she’s at least twenty years younger. Suzanne wears nice clothes, and smiles a lot, and pulls her short blonde hair back with thin headbands. Today, Tessa’s own hair is neatened with a dark blue headband.

Scott is drifting across the rink somewhere behind her; she can hear his blades scratching against the ice.

“What if, when you do that, I go something like this?” Scott calls, and she whirls around to see him throw his leg up in front of him in a massive, overextended kick. He’s being ridiculous, she knows, searching for attention more than anything else, but the movement has sent him off balance and he’s beginning to tumble backwards. She gasps, can’t possibly get there fast enough to do anything. All the same, she reaches out to him with both hands, _wills_ him not to fall - or at least to have a soft landing.

Somehow, he never hits the ice. When he falls, he bounces on the air, as though there were an invisible mattress between him and the floor, and back up into a standing position. He turns, flabbergasted, mouth wide open. Tessa can only stare at him wide-eyed.

“Did you just…?” Scott begins, excitement bubbling in his voice.

She nods, glancing down at her outstretched hands.

“I think I did!”

He rushes over to her immediately, shouts “You did it, Tess, you did it!” as he lifts her off her feet and twirls her. She grins and throws her arms around his neck, clutches him tight.

“Okay, okay, yes, it was a miraculous recovery,” Suzanne says. Their coaches know nothing of magic and choose to ignore the strange things that happen around their most talented pupils. “Now…”

And this time, it’s all three of them chanting together, grinning: “ _Again_!”

\-----

In the end, it’s clear: their magic is tied to each other. They never experience magic alone. Whenever it happens, it’s always when they’re together - them against the world.

It feels right, Scott thinks, even if he wishes he could hex his brothers when they tease him or throw a curse at his hockey teammates when they complain about Scott spending more time with a girl (the word comes out bitter, like it pains them to admit a girl exists) than he spends with them.

At first, his and Tessa’s magic is all chaos, uncontrolled, flowing out of them at the strangest moments. It takes time to refine it, bend and bind it to their will - a process of trial and error that they apply themselves to with tireless enthusiasm.

Just occasionally, their efforts reward them with a success rather than an error.

It’s an early morning in Waterloo, and Tessa and Scott are halfway through a particularly frustrating training session. They’re focusing on a new, complicated element - an advanced lift, where Scott will hold Tessa up on his shoulders while she catches her foot around his head.

A few weeks of practice on solid ground have helped them get the movements down, but translating the lift onto the ice has been troublesome. Once Tessa is up on Scott’s shoulders, she’s secure; there’s such a look of intense concentration on his face that the worry of him dropping her never even crosses her mind. The problem comes with their entry. Either Tessa jumps too high into the lift, putting Scott off balance when he straightens up, or Scott doesn’t drop his shoulder low enough for her to make the jump, or they both completely mistime their movements and abandon the lift before it’s even begun.

By the time it comes to attempt number nine, both Tessa and Scott are beginning to flag - but Paul and Suzanne thought they were ready for this, and they’re determined to prove their coaches right. Recently, Suzanne has been encouraging them to use one-word mantras - messages whispered to each other behind smiles - like “quicker” or “together” or “brighter”.  Today, they’re using “fly”.

“This time, Tess,” Scott says, as they set off from the boards. “Just like Suz told us - ‘fly’.”

Tessa nods, her small chin setting with determination.

They quickly gather speed, hand in hand. Tessa turns to begin the entry, takes a breath, and then, whispered together - “ _fly_ ”.  Suddenly, seemingly without effort, Tessa is on his shoulder and pulling her blade to her head. Scott nearly drops her in shock. It’s only the sound of Suzanne clapping that reminds him to focus, pulls his attention back to the moment.

“Did we make that happen?” Scott whispers, as soon as he’s set Tessa safely back down.

Tessa nods, slowly, glancing down at their intertwined hands. “I think so?”

For the rest of the practice, they have no trouble with the lift - assisted with a hushed, synchronised “fly” at first, then fading out into silence once they have the muscle memory down to complete it themselves.

Tessa doesn’t know how to explain it; she’s read plenty of books about magic, and none of them talk about anything like this. Magic is supposed to come with study and incantations and the wave of a wand, practiced and controlled. She’s certainly never heard of people casting magic _together_. But she whispers their keyword, and feels that intangible thread of power pushing out, out, searching for the link to close the loop, and she hears Scott’s voice like an echo, and the warm tug as his energy joins hers, pulls her up into the air - there’s no word she has to describe that except magic.

Scott’s shaking ice off his blades at the edge of the rink, about to leave for the changing rooms, when Tessa catches his hand.

“Meet me at your family’s rink tonight,” she says, firmly. “We’ll tell our parents we’re practicing.”  

It’s not technically a lie.

That evening, they stand at center ice at the Ilderton Arena.  The rink is silent and empty; the scratching of Scott’s blades as he fidgets next to her is the only sound Tessa can hear. In any other place, she might be nervous - but this is home, safe and secure. This is where they attempted their first lift; the dimly lit corner where Tessa launched herself into Scott’s arms and laughed when he almost toppled over backwards at her momentum. This is where they drilled their twizzles; the straight lengths of the rink they travelled in graceful, powerful strokes, twin blades hitting ice at the exact same time. This is where she first knew that they had something - something that wasn’t born from anything other than hard work and dedication. Their skating owes nothing to the magic flowing through their veins. It comes from a simple desire to improve, and skill nurtured by hours of practice, hours spent largely in this rink.

They’re simply about to try something a little different.

“Let’s turn off the lights,” Tessa says, pointing upwards.

Scott raises his eyebrows. “Sure you want to do that? You’re not afraid of the dark?”

“I’m a witch, silly, I can turn them back on.”

“Alright,” Scott mutters, as he claps his feet together and takes her hand. “You don’t have to make so much sense all the time, y’know.”

They close their eyes, breathe in, out, and Tessa wipes the grin from her face. Focus: whisper together “ _off_ ”. Tessa still has her eyes closed, brow furrowed in concentration when she hears Scott say “It didn’t work, Tessa,” - and sure enough, when she peeks an eye open, the lights remain stubbornly on.

“Maybe we’re using the wrong word,” she considers.

“Maybe. Or…what about  _visualisation_?” Scott says, and waggles his eyebrows. ‘Visualisation’ is Paul and Suzanne’s latest buzzword, constantly reminding them to imagine the performance in their minds’ eye before they take to the ice.

Tessa giggles, gives a small shrug. “It can’t hurt.”

They both close their eyes, steady their breathing. This time, instead of speaking, they picture the lights blinking off.

When Tessa opens her eyes again, Scott’s face is frustrated and definitely visible.

“Why isn’t it working?” he says. “It should work.”

Tessa frowns, thinking. “What if I focus on the light, and you focus on the magic? Maybe that way we can direct it?”

“Okay,” Scott says, but she sees the doubtful look flashing across his face as they close their eyes.

She tries, for a third time, to order the lights off. She imagines it as hard as she can - the fluorescent light flickering, stuttering out - concentrates so intently that she doesn’t even notice she’s drawing blood as she bites down on her lip. That familiar feeling of tingling warmth spreads out from her chest, searching for something to latch onto; reaching, stretching.

There’s a moment - focusing in silence at centre ice, when nothing seems to take - where Tessa, too, begins to doubt. Perhaps what happened earlier was a lucky breakthrough that she mistook for magic. It wouldn’t be the first time that a move had simply clicked for them.

Except then Scott’s hand tightens around hers. Her attention splits - half to the lights above, half to the point of connection between them. His hand is warm and soft and real - and just like that, she feels the magic seal shut like a circuit closing. The low humming of energy she pushed out is returned to her ten-fold; a kaleidoscope of colour and noise and life, tumbling through their joined hands to the point where she barely remembers where her magic ends and Scott’s magic begins.

Her eyes fly open at the exact instant that the lights turn off, plunging the rink into gloom. In the darkness, she hears Scott breathing beside her - quick and shallow, like he’s just run a marathon.

“Wow,” she says, and finds that she’s whispering for some reason. “It worked.”

“That. Was. _Incredible!_ ” Scott whoops, his voice echoing off the walls of the arena. “Did you feel that, Tess? We did that! We made that happen!”

He’s shaking with excitement, waving their joined hands back and forth as he hops on the spot. She can barely make out the expression on his face; grinning, wide and eager, just the same as when they perfect a move on the ice.  

Tessa giggles, letting Scott’s enthusiasm sweep her up. “It was pretty cool.”

“That’s  _it?”_ Scott says. “Pretty cool? We just did  _magic_ , Tessa!”

He grins as he grabs her other hand as well, draws so close that she can see the faint smudges of dirt on his chin from where they spent dinnertime rolling down the bank of the field next to the arena.

“Real, actual magic,” he repeats, and then before, Tessa can say anything - “Okay, okay, let’s do it again, let’s turn the light back on.”

It takes a little longer this time; Scott’s jittery with excitement, shifting restlessly as he clings to her hands. It manifests in his magic too - a crackling tension, flickering through her grasp when she tries to reach out and seal that connection once, twice - but then he quiets, and she feels the current solidify between them.

A full three minutes after they turned off, the lights shine brightly through the rink once more.

Scott is all energy and noise, basking in the accomplishment and plotting ways to use their magic to take revenge on his brothers, to blow something up - magic for show. The grin on Tessa’s face is genuine, but laced with something else. Everything she’s read tells her that this should not be possible - and yet, here they are flicking lights on and off with nothing but a thought.

Whatever this is, she certainly doesn’t intend to squander it. Until they can perfect this, until they can be certain that no one can take it away from them, it’ll be kept quiet.

\-----

Their lives become a balancing act of excellence.

They’re at the rink before school, after school, on weekends. They travel to competitions and come back to class on Monday with shiny medals and new stories to tell. With their few moments of freedom, they work on expanding their range of tricks. Levitating Tessa’s pencil case is simple - levitating Tessa _herself_ is something that Scott rules out immediately, to her disappointment. At least they’re getting better at transfiguration. Eighty percent of the time, they manage to convince a pebble that it would really much rather become a pretty little flower. The other twenty percent accounts for the strange piles of soot that accumulate on Scott’s bedroom floor.

Just once, they mess up in a way that makes their ash-related problems seem like an afterthought. It’s all Scott’s fault - or so he maintains for years after. He’s the one who puts forward the idea, one Saturday afternoon, dangling upside-down from a tree branch in their usual spot out back of the Ilderton Arena.

“We should have some way of defending ourselves,” he tells her, in an off-hand tone of voice. “So we’ll be ready when our enemies come.”

Out of the spindly limbs of the tree above, Tessa’s head pops into view. Twigs stick out of her previously-perfect plaits at haphazard angles; evidence of the last hour spent scrambling her way to the top of the canopy.

“Why do we have enemies?”

“Everyone has enemies,” Scott says, plainly, like he’s explaining the facts of life. “You never know who they are until they attack, ‘course. And then it’s too late to do anything - you’re a goner. They’d get you first, too, you’re so light they could carry you away before you even blinked.”

Tessa makes an unimpressed-sounding noise. “I’d step on their foot in my skates, then they wouldn’t be so happy.”

“Yeah, but what if you’re not wearing skates?”

“Then I’d bite their ear off.”

“What if they put a sock in your mouth?”

Tessa gives a long-suffering sigh and disappears from view. For a brief instant, Scott wonders whether he’s finally annoyed her so much that she’s never going to come down again; perhaps she’ll decide to live in the treetops like an owl. But he hears her before he sees her - her breath in soft huffs, her shoes scraping against the tree trunk - as she makes her way carefully down the side of the tree.

“Okay,” she says, as she plants her feet firmly on the ground and unhooks her dungarees from where they’ve snagged on the bark. “What’s your brilliant idea?”

Scott grins at her, cat-like. “A  _f_ _orcefield_.”

“A magical forcefield?”

A nod from Scott.

“If I say yes, you have to promise to let me pick the music in the car for at _least_ one month.”

He nods again, this time so vigorously that his entire body sways back and forth in the air. Tessa rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she sticks out her hand. Scott is on the ground next to her in an instant.

The first steps are the same as always: join hands, steady their breathing, focus inwards. Tune in to the current of energy that runs between them, the familiar hum of power that buzzes under their skin. But the feeling as they push for their magic is different - no longer reaching for each other like a lifeline. Instead, they weave and intertwine their power, dipping and twisting and crossing threads, one over the other, until the air around them is thick with the tapestry of their magic.

It’s a strange kind of instinctive dance, and Tessa has no idea if they’re doing any of it right, but it doesn’t seem wrong either.

The forcefield, if they can call it that, is nothing like she imagined. It feels _alive_ , almost. She can’t see it, but if she places a hand at the point where her magic ends, she can feel it underneath her fingertips, pulsing with power. There’s barely any resistance at all - until she takes a deep breath and pushes her arm forward, and suddenly it’s like plunging into a thick gelatin.

Everything feels slow, heavy. Keep going, she thinks. Push harder. If they’re going to go to the effort of producing a forcefield, it better be able to withstand more than this. So she grits her teeth and strains, and her arm moves further through the barrier. Inch by inch she goes, every second harder than the one before, but she _feels_ the edge of the forcefield just beyond her reach, so close that all she needs to do is step forward and she’d be on the other side and then - nothing.

She can’t move her fingers. She can’t turn her head. She can’t even blink.

Panic rises in her throat.

Her thoughts are escaping, flowing through her fingers like grains of sand; vanishing from her mind, one by one, like stones dropped into a well. Tessa feels them go - knows that she should be panicking, pulling herself back out, but the harder she tries to cling on to her thoughts, the faster they slip away. It’s becoming more and more difficult to remember anything at all. What was she supposed to be doing? Was it magic they were trying? If so, why is she the only one here? She swears there’s always someone with her when she’s casting magic - someone important, she thinks, by the cold spike of fear that grips her as the gaps in her memory yawn wider and wider.

A hand grasps her forearm, hard, the fingers digging tight into her muscles, and she would yelp if she could make a sound.  The hand pulls, strong and steady, and she starts to move slightly, but the force around her tightens too, like it’s trying to condense her, and it hurts, hurts…

Suddenly fresh air floods her lungs and Scott’s face, white, shaking slightly, is all she sees above her.  A sharp rock juts into the angle of her shoulder blade. There’s noise, too loud, and she’s not sure where it’s coming from. Scott’s mouth is moving, and oh - those are words, his words. What is he saying? She concentrates very hard.

“Tessa?! Tessa, are you ok?”

His hands are trembling slightly on her shoulders, shaking her back and forth.  She wants to tell him to be gentle, that it hurts, but words keep escaping every time she reaches for one. Eventually, she settles for lifting her finger - a soundless _hold on_ \- and a shaky rush of air escapes Scott as he gathers her in a hug.  She focuses on his breathing, the way his chest rises and falls beneath her arms, and eventually comprehension returns.

“Scott,” she whispers, her voice hoarse, and he runs a soothing hand over her back. “I didn’t like that at all.”

Scott pulls back, giving her space, but keeps hold of one of her hands.  “Neither did I, T. That was scary. You went all white and frozen, and I kept yelling at you, but you didn’t move a muscle.”

“I couldn’t, Scott. I couldn’t move, I - I couldn’t even think.”  A gasp escapes her throat as she begins to realise how badly things could have gone.  “Scott, I couldn’t remember you. I think I maybe could’ve _died_.”  

Scott’s hazel eyes are shiny with tears. “I shouldn’t have made you do it.” He goes to speak again but stops, his mouth open. For a long moment, he simply stares at her - and then she watches him draw in a trembling breath and steel himself. “I was so scared, Tessa. Maybe we shouldn’t do magic anymore.”

Tessa shakes her head immediately. Even now, with the adrenaline of fear fresh in her veins, she can’t imagine not practicing magic. That power beneath her fingers, the intoxicating feeling of interweaving his and hers, pushing it out into the world and bending it to her will.  No fear could drive her away from pursuing that.

“No, I don’t want that. But...I can borrow Jordan’s textbooks. We could stick with first year magic from now on, nothing too complicated?”

Scott’s thumb taps restlessly against the side of her hand, and there’s a worried, wild look in his eyes still. But the longer she sits there and lets her words sink in, the slower his hand twitches in hers, the less his shoulders shake. Eventually, he stills.

He nods - and that’s that.

The unspoken lesson, however, lingers in their minds for years.  Whenever they attempt magic, it’s with a newfound respect, an understanding that their power is not limited to cheap parlour tricks.  They look out for each other more: anticipating, protecting, guarding. Partnership means more than just power, it means responsibility.

\-----

They make an agreement to never use magic in competition. Besides being a distraction and an unnecessary risk, they value the purity of the win. When they crush their competition - and they do, often - they win clean, without the aid of magic. It’s rare they find themselves off the podium, and uncommon that they’re not wearing gold.

It’s a level of excellence gained through a brutal routine; skating and school, alternating over and over and over, days to weeks to months to years. They amass a large collection of medals, piles upon piles of photographs - both magical and not - and perfect their ability to zone out against each other in the back of a car.

They almost forget about Hogwarts, until the day of Scott’s eleventh birthday.

Scott's proper birthday celebration - the party and the presents and the games - happens a few days earlier, in order to catch his brothers before they Floo across the Atlantic for the start of term. Almost every kid in his class shows up to the party, and more: the cluster of boys he runs with at the rink, his friends from hockey, and Tessa, of course, in her plaited pigtails and yellow party dress.

The entire affair could be generously described as ‘organised chaos’. Danny and Charlie prefer ‘The Tenth Circle of Hell’, newly established as the domain of prepubescent children hopped up on cake frosting and Kool-Aid. Tessa is the first casualty of the day - dashing into the house behind Scott and his friends, she catches her foot on the bottom step of the patio and smacks face-first into the wooden decking. She's lucky to get away with a split lip; Scott calls it her "war wound" and parades her around as a hero. After all, he thinks, what's the good of a birthday if you can't use it to make everyone swear allegiance to Tessa Virtue, first of her name and noblest of her house, slayer of dragons and men alike?

By the end of the party, Scott's exhausted parents have treated four bruised knees, a possibly broken finger, and a tearful meltdown following a particularly expletive-ridden threat (for which Danny gets assigned to post-party cleanup). Only one child receives a piggyback procession from Charlie around the garden, but then Tessa is the exception to many rules in the Moir household.

She's allowed to ask for seconds without finishing what's already on her plate. She's allowed to hang her coat on a peg by the door, doesn't have to fight for space in the coat closet bursting with waterproofs and thick winter coats. She's even allowed to put up a photo on the mantelpiece. As a rule of thumb, Scott's parents don't keep wizarding photos downstairs - it saves the frantic dash around the house to freeze every single picture frame whenever a neighbour drops by for a chat. The only space preserved for such photos is the mantelpiece in the living room.

Before Scott's party, there are three photos atop the mantelpiece; an assortment of family snapshots, alike with sheepish grins and over-exuberant waving. Afterwards, one more joins the collection.

As the other children leave the party in dribs and drabs, Tessa finds Alma in the kitchen. Scott’s busy at the front door, waving the last hockey teammate goodbye.

“Excuse me,” she says, and Alma turns from loading the dishwasher. “I have something for you.”

From the depths of her dress pockets, Tessa produces a small parcel. It’s wrapped tightly in layers of lilac tissue and tulle, finished with a neat silver ribbon.

“What’s this, honey, a present?” Alma wipes her hands on a teatowel, smiling as she accepts the gift. She turns it over carefully in her hands. “You want me to give this to Scott?”

“Nope,” Tessa says, pigtails swaying with the shaking of her head. “I don’t know what it is, but Mum told me specifically to give it to you.”

“Well now, that’s very kind of her. What did -”

Alma stops in the midst of pulling away the wrapping paper.

At first, Tessa doesn't even register the gift itself; she's struck the strangeness of Alma's reaction. Scott's mother usually holds herself so steady and firm, but her hands tremble now as she grips the present. It's not a bad tremble, Tessa's certain - there's a smile on Alma's face, the kind of smile that she sees sometimes on her own mother's face, all warm and soft and welcoming. Then she glances down at the small, square gift in Alma's hands.

"Oh!” she gasps, “It's us!"

Contained within a simple silver frame is a photo of herself and Scott. They're sitting on the grassy bank outside the Ilderton Arena, making daisy-chain crowns - Tessa remembers the day, one afternoon in late June with the sun blazing in the sky. The camera lens was smeared when the photo was taken, perhaps, because the image has a faintly dream-like quality to it; hazy, all round edges and smooth movements.

She watches as photo-Tessa places a crown on Scott's head, the daisies nestling against the rich brown of his hair. A pout appears immediately on his face - she remembers the way he glowered and sulked - and then, too, just as she remembers, photo-Tessa throws back her head in laughter. At first Scott looks offended, but then the corners of his eyes begin to crinkle, and his lips turn upwards, and a smile spills across his face with the radiance of the summer sun.

"It's very nice," Tessa whispers, almost afraid to break the silence that has fallen over the kitchen as both she and Alma stare at the photo.

Gently, Alma places a hand against the side of Tessa’s cheek, brown eyes locking onto green. There’s an emotion in the depths of Alma’s expression that Tessa can’t even begin to fathom.

“It’s a treasure, love. Thank you.”

Tessa beams. While she loves her mother, she cherishes Alma. Her mother teaches her pride and determination and the joy of reading on a park bench. Alma teaches her laughter and jump rope rhymes and how to create the perfect ice cream sundae.

By the time Tessa’s mother arrives to pick her up, the photo has taken its place beside the family portraits on the mantelpiece. Danny and Charlie don’t even comment on the new addition. After all, the Moir family shares one enduring commonality: rules are meaningless in the face of Tessa Virtue.

A few days after the party, Tessa is given permission to sleep over on a school night - Wednesday, September 2nd - to celebrate Scott's real birthday. There are certain upsides to having a not-birthday and an actual-birthday - two birthday cakes, two choruses of 'Happy Birthday', two 24-hour periods in which everyone is blissfully compliant to Scott's whims and wishes. But his _actual_ birthday can't help but pale in comparison to the chaos of the 'fake' one.

"It's kind of like a roller coaster," Scott explains to Tessa, as they sit in the car on the way to training that morning. "You know, when you're waiting at the beginning, going up and up and up, into the clouds almost-"

Tessa interrupts, in a hushed voice. "They wouldn't let me ride the roller coaster at Disney, I was too small."

"Okay, but you still know what a roller coaster is."

" _Duh_."

That's Tessa's new word - 'Duh'. She comes in with a fresh discovery every Monday morning, usually pulled from a book she read or a character on television that she particularly likes. This week, somewhere, she picked up 'Duh' - complete with a withering look that would put the fear of God into kids twice her size. Tessa's father hates it, which Scott thinks is the main reason why Tessa keeps saying it so much.

"Well then, listen. I'm trying to tell you something," Scott says, and Tessa rolls her eyes and pulls her knees up to her chest, but she quietens. "Anyway, everyone knows the best part of roller coasters is when you go whooshing down the other side, like a rocket. My party the other day was like that - like a massive _whoosh_ after waiting for ages and ages to get to the top."

Tessa gives him a sweet smile. "It was the best party I've ever been to, definitely."

"Right? The best, for sure," Scott grins, basking in the delight reflected in Tessa's eyes as she nods. "But now, it's like - I dunno," - he fixes his gaze on his hands, picks at the hangnail by his thumb - "all the fun parts of the roller coaster was used up in my fake birthday, and now there's nothing left for my real one except more going up and up, and no one cares about that."

The rumble of tires across the road surface almost drowns out Tessa's tiny gasp.

"That's _terrible_ ," she says, and the sheer emotion in her voice makes him glance up, his brow furrowing in confusion - and are those _tears_ glimmering at the corners of her eyes? Of Tessa Virtue's eyes, she of iron will and unending rationality?

Scott is so shocked he can barely stammer a response. "I mean, it - it kinda sucks but it's not _that_ bad, Tess. You don't need to cry." On second thoughts, as he watches her bottom lip wobble - "Please? Please don't cry."

He stretches out a tentative hand to pat her arm. It's supposed to be a soothing gesture, but her eyes shimmer dangerously with unshed tears, and her mouth is conducting such complex acrobatics to stop itself twisting into a sob that it looks like she's trying to chew off her own lip - and never mind, he's better off keeping his hands to himself. God, he hopes his parents are engrossed in their conversation in the front seat, he will get yelled at so much for making Tessa cry.

"I care," Tessa says, in the smallest voice that he's ever heard. "I care about all of the roller coaster."

It's not until later that day that Scott understands what she means.

He doesn't know how many sleepovers Tessa has attended in her short life, but it's obviously not enough - she arrives at his house, eats his birthday cake (chocolate, he chose it specially for her), and proceeds to sit at his kitchen table in silence and do homework. Homework! Her pencil makes scratching sounds as she works, and occasionally her dangling feet hit a table leg, and if Scott listens _really_ hard, he thinks he hears her humming under her breath, but that's about it.

In the absence of conversation, he gazes out of the kitchen window into the gathering dusk. It's late enough that the shadows are beginning to length, but not so late that the street lighting has come on; he can just barely make out the string of shiny birthday balloons tied to the porch railings of the house. It's not a particularly windy day outside - which makes it all the more curious as Scott watches the balloons bob up and down on the end of their ribbon. The tops of the pine trees that border his house are still, not bowing like they usually do in the wind. The grass lawn is unruffled. The balloons continue to flutter in the wake of some kind of movement.

Then, suddenly, something small and brown rockets into view and - BANG! - crashes into the window.

Scott jerks his head backwards with a start. Tessa doesn't so much as drop her pencil.

To be fair, in magical communities, you get used to wayward owls. What Scott is _not_ used to is the bird flying straight to him when he opens the window. There's an letter held in its beak; a pristine white envelope, with his name written in flowing cursive across the front.

“Oh!” Tessa gasps, having finally looked up from her papers. “It’s time!”

Scott looks at her, wide-eyed. He’d honestly forgotten - they'd had the party, and then training, and they'd been learning a new program, and he barely had time to remember that today is _actually_ his eleventh birthday, and this is the day he's been waiting for since he was old enough to run his fingers across the letters in the family scrapbook and sound out the words 'Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry' (quite a mouthful for a five-year old).

Slowly, hands shaking, he unties the letter from the owl. Tessa moves beside him, hand seeking out his shoulder. "Open it!"

Scott does as he’s told. It’s exactly what he's read twice before, peering around his brothers' shoulders - a letter of acceptance and a supplies list. Tessa snatches the latter eagerly, her eyes racing across the lines of text.

"Oh, this one is my favourite!" she says, pointing out a title halfway down the page. Scott rolls his eyes - of course Tessa already has a favourite textbook.

He ignores her muttering over the booklist as his fingers trace the crest on the top of the acceptance letter. This is it. There's the lion, the snake, the raven, the badger. There's the school motto - the only Latin he's ever bothered to learn. _Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus_ \- never tickle a sleeping dragon.

Scott barely realises he's reciting the words out loud until Tessa nudges him. He's seen all of this before, but somehow it feels different, more real, with _his_ name written in elegant handwriting. In a mere 364 days, he'll be crossing the Atlantic with his brothers. 364 days until he embarks on a full school year without Tessa. 364 days until he’s alone. He swallows, hard. A year without her suddenly seems like a very long time.

"It's going to be okay, you know," Tessa says. "You’ll get to enjoy being the best student for a single year, before I come along and steal your spot."

She's trying to smile, but Scott can see the uncertainty in her eyes. She's as afraid of this separation as he is, he realises; she's simply better at hiding it. He's learning to recognise her tells - there's a little waver in her voice as she begins speaking, like a ship correcting course against a gust of wind. There’s the way she finds something unrelated to busy herself with, as she grabs an owl treat from the jar on the kitchen counter and offers it to their impatient messenger.

Tessa is small in a physical sense, yes, but with her words, too, and her emotions - taking up as little space as possible, leaving room for everybody else. Tessa's anger is not like his, all yelling and throwing water bottles. Her frustration is quiet and wordless, simmering under her skin until Scott can tell by touch alone that if he says the wrong thing, she might not speak to him for an hour. Her sadness is even smaller. She folds in upon herself, buries herself deeper and deeper within - and then, the horrible times when she cries, Scott imagines that she's so small she could slip through his fingertips and he would never even notice.

She only cries when there's no other alternative.

Like earlier, in the car - "I care," with glistening eyes and a hopeless look - with him about to swan off to Hogwarts for a year and leave her in the lurch. It’s like puzzle pieces clicking into place; he doesn’t know how he didn’t see it earlier, when the solution seems to be spelled out so plainly for him now.

There’s a brief hoot and a flurry of beating wings, and the owl vanishes out of the open window.

Scott grabs for Tessa’s hand. "I'll write to you every week, I promise. I'll tell you about what we're learning, and about which professors are the worst, and how many books the library lets you take out at once, and - and then I'll come back during the holidays and teach you everything, and we'll skate and it'll be just like usual, except even better because we'll be able to do more magic. You can send me things too, and..."

He trails off as Tessa looks up at him. "I don't like leaving you, T."

"Me either," Tessa says. Her fingers are limp in his as she drops her gaze to her feet - like she's embarrassed to be caught in a moment of insecurity.

"I - I think, though..." she begins, after a small pause. "It's kind of weird, I don't know how it works, but - sometimes even when you're not here, you're _here" -_ and Scott feels her squeeze his hand. "I just have to pretend like we're trying to cast a spell. Close my eyes, reach out for your hand, and sometimes if I imagine it hard enough, I feel it. I feel you, I think."

Scott grins. “Freaky.”

There’s a quiet eternity that seems to stretch as Tessa’s eyes widen, and Scott suddenly realises that he might not be as much of an expert in reading body language as he thought. For all he knows, she could be cycling through the entire spectrum of human emotion behind that carefully blank stare. The little raise of her eyebrow - is that disgust? Are her lips twitching in anger? In shock? In distress?

But she promptly elbows him in the side.

"Hey, hey!" Scott holds up his hands in surrender. "You said it yourself! It _is_ weird. Do you think we're, like, psychically connected? Maybe we're long-lost twins, separated at birth."

They look at each other, considering the prospect. Then, simultaneously:

"Ew," Tessa says, wrinkling her nose.

"Nope, no way," Scott shakes his head.

Tessa giggles then, high-pitched and infectious, and like always, Scott's worries dissolve in the wake of her laughter.

"Maybe we could try working on that this year," he suggests. "So I'll always be in reach, wherever we are."

Tessa's sadness makes her shrink, but when she smiles at him, all starry-eyed and glowing, she gets so big and bright that she's the only thing Scott can see in the entire room.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding happily. “I’d like that.”

And for that evening, and the year that follows, they push the future out of mind. They focus on immediate joys: sneaking an extra slice of chocolate cake, topping the podium at every competition, scrambling up trees outside the Ilderton Arena, watching movies side-by-side on the ratty old couch in Scott’s room.

The most important thing they accomplish before Scott leaves for Hogwarts is the ability to feel each other - through their magic, or something like it, just as Tessa had described.

They devote hours to it - sitting outside the rink at Waterloo, waiting for their parents to pick them up; whispering over the phone, long after sunset. During the first few weeks of experimentation, Scott spends so long squirreled away in his room that his mother has to threaten him with removing phone privileges to get him to come down and join them for dinner. He and Tessa are resolute, determined to examine every facet of this strange new development - and successful in their findings.

The ability is contingent upon certain conditions.

Firstly, both parties must be open to the connection. It works like a telephone - one reaches out, and the other accepts. The ghost of a touch becomes tangible; every callus, every scar, every line on their palm, as real as if they were standing next to one another.

The feeling only extends as far as their hands, but even so, Tessa insists on figuring out how to ‘reject’ the call. Scott had objected at first - his hand is respectably clean and inoffensive, cleaner than most boys in his class, at least.

“What if I’m trying to concentrate in class?” she’d pointed out, frowning.

Scott’s eyes had widened, horrified. “What if I’m in the _shower_?!”

To avoid such traumatic experiences, they practice turning down the connection - even if it hurts a little every time they reach out and are met with nothing but empty space beneath their fingertips. As soon as they’re confident in their ability, they turn to more comforting matters like how long they can maintain the connection.

They start simple; sitting at opposite ends of the rink cafeteria, holding hands for minutes at a time.

Later, Tessa’s there with him during the school assembly at the end of the year, one hand tucked behind his back. No one can see the way his fingers tighten around something invisible, holding fast for the entire three hours - a new record.

When Tessa visits Montreal for a weekend, they take the opportunity to test the distance the bond can endure. She waits patiently all day, trailing from shop to shop behind her parents. As soon as she’s back at the hotel room, she throws the bedcovers over her head and reaches out for him, hopes she hasn’t left it too late - perhaps he’s asleep already. But with barely any thought, he’s there, hand in hers despite the miles between them.

One night over summer vacation, Scott falls asleep with Tessa’s voice crackling through the phone against his ear, her hand entwined with his. Waking up the next morning to find their fingers still interlaced, they decide they don’t need to test it any more.

When Scott Moir boards the Hogwarts Express on the 1st of September, it’s with Tessa’s hand in his, from across the Atlantic.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to all those who encouraged the transformation of a simple headcanon post into this multi-chapter monstrosity of a story. Maybe one day we'll get our lives back. Until then, writing this is an incredible amount of fun - I hope you enjoyed reading as much as we enjoyed creating it! Please feel free to drop a comment below, or get in contact over on Tumblr, where you can find us at @virtueoso and @bivirtuealone. 
> 
> Bonus points to anyone who can guess the music that Tessa conjured up (HINT: it's linked to both the chapter title and a past program of VM's).


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